; then the shower of
red-hot stones and lava. At this time, as we found on our way down, lava
masses of 150 or 200 pound weight were being thrown a distance of
probably a mile and a half; smaller ones we found even more remote.
These showers were most copious, and often came in the most rapid
succession. Even while we were ascending the exterior of the cone, we
saw them alighting on its slope, and sometimes bounding down with
immense rapidity within, perhaps, some thirty or forty yards of our
rickety footing on the mountain side. They dispersed like the sparks of
a rocket; they lay beneath the moon, over the mountain, thicker than
ever the stars in heaven; the larger ones ascended as it were with
deliberation, and descended, first with speed and then with fury. Now
they passed even over our heads, and we could pick up some newly fallen,
and almost intolerably hot. Lastly, there was the black grey column,
which seemed smoke, and was really ash, and which was shot from time to
time out of the very bowels of the crater, far above its edge, in
regular unbroken form."

At the Casa Inglesi we remounted the mules, and made a slight detour to
the east in order to look down into the Val del Bove, which is here seen
as a gigantic valley, bounded on the north by the precipitous cliffs of
the Serra delle Concazze, and on the South by the Serra del Solfizio. It
is believed by Lyell and others that in the Balzo di Trifoglietto, at
which point the precipices are most profound and abrupt, there was a
second permanent crater of eruption. The Torre del Filosofo, a ruined
tower, traditionally the observatory of Empedocles, stands near the Casa
Inglesi. Not far from this a great deposit of ice was found in 1828. It
was preserved from melting by a layer of ashes and sand, which had
covered it, soon after its first existence, as a glacier: a stream of
lava subsequently flowed over the ashes, and completely protected the
ice; the non-conducting power of the ashes prevented the lava from
melting the ice. The snow which falls on the mountain is stowed away in
caves, and used by the Sicilians during summer. A ship load is also sent
to Malta, and the Archbishop of Catania derives a good deal of his
income from the sale of Etna snow.

During our descent from the mountain we were much struck by the apparent
nearness of the minor cones beneath us, and of the villages at the base
of the mountain. They seemed to be painted on a vertical wall in front